Florida voters elected Republican Ron DeSantis as governor and Republican Rick Scott as senator on election night. Both were announced as winners and Desantis’ opponent conceded defeat. But then Democratic lawyer Marc Elias announced that Democrats would be going for a recount and would win the Senate seat.

A few days after the 2018 election was held, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sounded the alarm about serious irregularities in the counting of ballots in two Democratic stronghold counties in Florida:

To make sure that votes aren’t being invented or destroyed to effect an outcome, one of the first priorities of any election supervisor is to announce how many ballots are in possession and how many remain to be counted. To fail to do this, as the Broward County and Palm Beach County Supervisors had, is to open themselves up to the accusation of massive vote fraud.

Citizens can not have confidence that ballots are not being destroyed, or created, when supervisors fail to immediately announce how many ballots are on hand.

Florida law also requires that vote-by-mail and absentee ballots are accounted for within 30 minutes of polls closing. While the other 65 counties in Florida had no problem following this state law, the supervisors of Broward County and Palm Beach County refused to follow that law.

Florida law also requires that the Department of State be given reports every 45 minutes until results are completely filed. Palm Beach County has refused to do this.

Despite these stunning violations of law, and Rubio’s cry to stop the madness in these counties that have a history of election problems, media seemed largely uninterested in what was happening in Florida.

Rubio reminded Americans that Broward County’s supervisor had a history of election problems, including illegally destroying ballots, secretly opening mail-in ballots, sending voters too many ballot pages, and leaving a constitutional question off the ballot.

Here’s how the media is handling this extremely serious issue of mounting evidence of a Florida election-stealing scandal:

A hundred more examples could be offered.

To be clear, these are not the stories and social media accounts of official Democratic partisans, but the accounts and stories of a media that is desperate to not be thought of as “fake news.” A media that is desperate to make the case that they are something other than partisan hacks who care about elevating Democrats and harming Republicans above all other journalistic concerns. If you see even an ounce of daylight between these narrative constructions and those of Democrats, please share. Because to the naked eye, this is nothing but pure gaslighting about the obvious efforts of two of the most historically scandal-ridden counties in the country when it comes to elections and voting.

It is without question that lawful processes were not followed. To say otherwise is scandalous and insulting to the intelligence of most people. Everyone knows what is going on here and to say that there is no evidence, when evidence is obvious to everyone, including those who are pretending it isn’t there, is offensive.

A media that were something other than the communications leaders of the progressive movement would note that Palm Beach County is violating Florida law by refusing to provide required information to the public, and by illegally refusing to allow officials into the ballot counting area to observe what is occurring.

Does Democracy Still Die In Darkness?

We’ve been told by major national media organizations that democracy dies in darkness, that accountability is required to protect the republic, that their job is to make sure that those in power don’t abuse it. As one CNN anchor put it recently:

But the response to election officials shutting out any public accountability has been to scream that those upset about it are insane and making allegations without evidence.

The country is more than two-and-a-half years into an effort by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to create a false narrative of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal an election. While Russia has decades of practice of election meddling — along with many other countries — the narrative was used to undermine the Trump administration, sideline senior officials, spy on campaign operatives, and otherwise violate norms of the republic.

President Trump noted the hypocrisy of the media and other Democratic partisans in pushing this narrative while ignoring the latest example of defying election laws in the 2018 midterms:

Time’s political correspondent unironically claimed that this tweet itself was Russian interference:

Our media completely believe without evidence that Donald Trump engaged in a 30-year conspiracy with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton, but have complete confidence in an election supervisor who earlier this year was found by Florida courts to have illegally hidden and destroyed ballots.

If democracy dies in darkness, then it might be time to read the last rites for legitimate elections in Florida.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway